Così Tra Questa Immensità (In The Midst Of This Immensity)
by FritzyM4
Summary: The galaxy lies before him, and so, in the midst of this immensity, his thoughts drown. Obi-Wan's on his way to Tatooine...again, after many a long year. But this time it's under very different circumstances...and he's got quite a bit on his mind... SOME CHAPTERS UPDATED RECENTLY!
1. Chapter 1

**Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani silenzi, e profondissima quïete io nel pensier mi fingo; ove per poco il cor non si spaura… Così tra questa immensità s'annega il pensier mio: e il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare.**

**[But sitting here and gazing, I can see beyond, in my mind's eye, unending spaces, and superhuman silences, and depthless calm, 'til my heart is no longer afraid… So in the midst of this immensity my thought drowns: and shipwreck is sweet to me in this sea.]**

**~Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi: 1798 – 1837~**

Obi-Wan is shaking.

The once-proud and refined General Kenobi sits quietly on the third class bare durasteel bench of the Galactic interplanetary transport. The cold of the metal is beginning to seep through the rough cotton weave of his Jedi trousers into his bones, and he shivers.

_A usually-energetic head of straw-blond hair grumpily emerges from beneath the cowl of a miniature Jedi robe._

_"__Master…?" Impatience is curbed just long enough to wait for acknowledgement by authority._

_"__Yes, Padawan?"_

_"__Is space always, well…this cold?"_

_Since Masters Yoda and Mace Windu are also in attendance, Obi-Wan cannot give Anakin a straight answer._

_"__Only when you concentrate on it. Once you learn to expand your focus beyond the immediate, small physical discomforts will become much less…perceptible."_

_The boy's eyebrows beetle together as he attempts to decipher the exact – and simple – meaning behind Obi-Wan's reply._

_Inwardly chuckling, the young Master sends a private thought along their fledgling training bond:_

_"__Alas, my very young apprentice, space is always very cold."_

The all-pervading cold fills the passenger chamber, despite the exceedingly cramped conditions, and chills the very air he breathes. He reminds himself acerbically that he has always hated space travel for this reason.

_Anakin hates space flight even more than you do…_

The Jedi – no, ex-Jedi – Master draws his long brown cloak more securely around himself in an effort to ward off the chill, shrugging his hands more securely within the sleeves, arms crossed over his chest.

The thick material warms his body, but not his heart.

His heart will never be warm again. It sits frozen solid in the middle of his breast, so that Obi-Wan thinks the ice of Hoth must surely be surrounding – permeating – it. Even the blazing heat of Tatooine cannot crack such a frigid shield.

_Tatooine._

The scorched cinder of desert planet is his destination.

Ironic that the self-same sunsbaked soil upon which his Padawan – now his arch-nemesis – was born will be the one his former Master will now reside on…presumably until the day he dies. That they should now both call the same Force-forsaken bit of cosmic dust home…they have such precious little else in common anymore…

_Anakin has always hated Tatooine with a passion (though hate does not become a Jedi) mainly for two reasons: the first being its well-earned and deserved reputation as a hive of despicable villainy, safe haven as it is for the scum of the galaxy…and the second (far more innocuous) being for the copious, omnipresent sand._

_Once, he wryly remarks to Obi-Wan that, for one of these reasons or the other or both, on Tatooine he had never felt clean._

Obi-Wan, ever fastidiously neat and tidy, knows for a fact that he will never feel clean again. The stain of sorrow – of shame – of failure – marks him like a brand.

At another time, in another place, Anakin might find this vaguely amusing…the idea of his Master being the dirty one, for a change…

_Anakin… _He must remember to stop calling him that. It is _Vader_ now – Vader, the Emperor's right hand; Vader, the terror of the galaxy; Vader, the Sith.

Anakin Skywalker is gone – dead. He is…no more.


	2. Chapter 2

Of course, his body – Anakin's body (what broken and scarred tissue remains of it) – keeps on breathing, walking, talking…his eyes keep on seeing…

But the mind behind those eyes has been horribly deformed; twisted to the Dark side by the subtly perverse wiles of Palpatine – no, Darth Sideous – and the folly of those who should have been wiser…the Jedi Council, for instance…but namely, himself.

The mind that was Anakin has been destroyed. The boy grown into a man that Obi-Wan had raised, respected, admired…loved, his companion, brother…son…has been obliterated by the corruption and decay of deceit and fear.

Fear leads to anger.

For, from whence springs anger? Fear of loss…

_Anakin jolts bolt upright in his bed at his quarters in the Jedi Temple, chest heaving, heart pounding, head aching unmercifully. He is terrified._

_Padmé…_

_In his dream – no, nightmare – Padmé writhes on a medbay cot, shrieking in agony as she gives birth to their firstborn. Her Force signature is murky and weak – too weak! With one last agonized cry, the child emerges into the world, and its mother collapses, utterly spent. Her heartbeat and breathing slow – no Padmé, no Angel! no you can't be dying, you can't die, youcan'tdieyoucan'tyoucan't – as she reaches for her baby with the last of her waning strength. Her fingertips brush the infant's cheek in a gentle caress before her arm falls limp to her side. She exhales in a long, whispery breath – and the inhale of the next breath never comes…_

_Sick at heart, the young Jedi Knight recalls his visions of his mother. She died at the brutal hands of Tusken Raiders, just as his nightmares foretold…_

_No! He cannot lose another of those he loves to prophetic dreams._

_But what can he do?_

_In his grief, he remembers the words of Chancellor Palpatine…_

_"__Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create life… He had such knowledge of the Dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying…"_

_Anger flares within him. Why should only a Sith – and a long-dead one, at that – be privileged with this information? Couldn't such power do so much good, when in the right hands? Why shouldn't he, a Jedi, learn the art… __His mind and heart – his soul – rail against the injustice of it._

_The next day, as he meets with his former Master outside the Council chamber, his eyes troubled and weary-red with lack of sleep, Obi-Wan asks him what is the matter._

_"__Oh…nothing, Master. I'm just a little tired…that's all." The lie falls much too easily from practiced lips._

_Obi-Wan clearly would like to press the issue, but curtails the interrogation. Anakin is no longer his Padawan. He is a Jedi Knight – soon to be a Master himself, Force willing – and a man grown._

_He can guard his own house, so to speak._

_And as the doors before them open and private conversation is at an end for the moment, anger flares within Anakin again._

_Firstly, directed at Obi-Wan – for not caring enough to pry the true answer from Anakin's unwilling lips._

_Secondly, belatedly perhaps, directed at himself – for lacking the courage to tell Obi-Wan the truth without being prompted._


	3. Chapter 3

Anger leads to hate…

_He has known for some time now that the Senator and the young Jedi are lovers. Husband and wife, actually; he has deduced that from scrutinizing their subtlest actions – and from the knowledge that extramarital affairs are below even Anakin's often-questionable moral standards…_

_Perhaps the most painful of all the Jedi Code's teachings is the one regarding attachment._

_A Jedi shall have no possessions. And attachment is exactly that: a possessive, clutching, greedy passion masquerading as love that leads to obsession… And how quickly the fires of passion can kindle the embers of suspicion – the worst form of fear – and from there, anger…_

_Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to…_

_They both know the mantra well – too well, it seems…_

_But he never could bring himself to broach the subject with Anakin – to let him know that he knows._

_Probably because Obi-Wan himself has walked the razor-thin edge between friendship and love, love and dangerous attachment – more than once – and thus he cannot pontificate to another, nor admonish him for breaking the Code that he himself has, so many times, come so close to breaking…_

_The rich, honeyed scents of a Mandalorian flower garden gently tickling his nose… Golden sunbeams dancing along a young Duchess' bouncing vanilla-blond curls that felt finer than any Demicot silk to his fingers that combed through them delicately, parting them like water… Flashing aquamarine eyes that never lost the power to coax a boyish grin from his stern lips…_

_Though long ago, the memories still slide sweetly, painfully, over his heart…_

_A Jedi must not form attachments, Master Yoda would say._

_Yes… But the undercurrent of remorse, he would leave unspoken__…_

_The lesson had been a necessary but bitter one…one that Anakin had never – and now, would never – learn…_

_From his vantage point within Padmé's space cruiser, Obi-Wan can see the young Senator pleading with Anakin. Snippets of their conversation float to him on the scalded, fetid air: "Obi-Wan…terrible things…you…" She's begging him to leave now, with her, while he still can…_

_But Anakin whirls in anger and spies the Jedi Master standing in the ship's open doorway._

_Distorted – perverted – by fear, anger, and hate…the Jedi-turned-Sith comes to only one conclusion._

_And Obi-Wan can all too easily list the emotions, the litany of sins, that scroll through his – former – Padawan's brain as he allots and attributes them, one by one, to a man he once would have trusted with his life._

_Trusted like a brother._

_Like a…father._

_But he might as well be a perfect stranger to the strange young man before him now, whose eyes are a clear window to his thoughts – his disgusting, ugly thoughts –_

_The smile on Obi-Wan's face as he first met the Senator again after years of separation when Anakin was yet but a Senior Padawan – a leer of lust…lust in the way they embraced and in the way she pressed a soft kiss to his bearded cheek…in his hands that lingered on her slim waist and her fingers that gripped his shoulders…in the friendly kiss he, in return, bestowed upon the back of her smooth hand…lust and desire in his eyes as he watched her take her leave, her hips gently – enticingly – swaying with each step…_

_Lust in Obi-Wan's eyes as the two Jedi guarded her through the night, observing her sleep, observing the moonlight turn her wavy chestnut hair silver and her creamy skin white, observing her breasts rise and fall with each breath…_

_All the times the Master and the Senator had been alone together – secret trysts which always ended with the pair tangled in soft Nabooian sheets, naked limbs entwined…Padmé's beautiful face flushed in a moan of bliss while Obi-Wan's pleasure-darkened eyes slowly raked over her curvaceous form before his head bent down to press his lips to hers, his tongue slipping out to plunder her mouth and taste her… _

_None of it is true. All these moments – perfectly innocent…_

_But now Padmé's own words will be used against her: "Obi-Wan…terrible things…you…"_

_Obi-Wan. "You." Her…_

_And Obi-Wan can feel what Anakin thinks of his faithful wife as if the thoughts were his own – _

_Bitch! Senatorial slut! Jedi's whore! __To think that I wanted – sacrificed – to save your life…_

_"Liar!"_

_The young Sith lord is beside himself with rage. "You're with him. You've betrayed me! You brought him here to kill me!"_

_The memory of a Mandalorian soldier who chanced to speak to a certain Duchess flits through Obi-Wan's mind and he remembers the whispers and the soft giggles…remembers the rage and jealousy coursing through him like a heady draught…remembers smashing his right fist, quick as lightning, into the young man's face and watching him, stunned, stagger upright to hold a hand to a broken nose from which blood, hot and sticky, flowed…the same blood that redly coated his throbbing knuckles…and he remembers the dark satisfaction filling him and twisting his guts into roiling knots…remembers the stinging slap delivered, heedless of all pleading, to a cheek smooth as satin, sending flaxen curls tumbling into the dust at his feet…_

_Nothing he had assumed then had been true, either._

_And Obi-Wan desperately wants Anakin to know this, to know that he knows what he is feeling now, to know that it is old and familiar – and wrong –_

_But Anakin does not know._

_Anakin – now all Vader – raises his arm in a ruthless Force hold, and Padmé's desperate denials turn to gasps as she begins to choke…_


	4. Chapter 4

Hate leads to suffering…

_Anakin lies sprawled inches above a roaring river of lava, his three remaining flesh limbs reduced to stumps by the quick strokes of Obi-Wan's lightsaber. Horrified, the Jedi Master looks down upon what remains of his once-beloved apprentice, chilled to the bone by what he has been forced to do._

_That's odd, a detached part of his mind thinks. It is as if the heat of Mustafar, rather than burning him, has greedily sucked any vestigial remnants of heat from his body, leaving him…frozen._

_Anakin's mutilated body struggles to climb the bank, his face contorted in a tortured snarl of hate for Obi-Wan._

_And now Obi-Wan must turn from grief to anger – incensed that Anakin hates him – him! – as if it was he that destroyed the Jedi, both Temple and Order; he who callously murdered all in rank from Initiate to Master (the only true family either man has ever known); he who betrayed a man closer than a brother…_

_Overcome, he cannot stop the torrent of words pouring out from his mortally-wounded heart._

_"__You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! It was you who would bring balance to the Force, not leave it in Darkness!"_

_The wretch lying, crushed and broken, on black sands looks up into the sweat-and-tear-streaked face of his former Master (when did he begin to weep?), his eyes Sith-yellow with fury._

_"__I hate you!" Anakin – Vader – pours the very conflagration of Mustafar into the words._

_Obi-Wan cannot do more than shake his head sadly, numbly, as his heart shatters into little pieces over the enormity of what has been lost:_

_"__You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you."_

_The tattered remains of Anakin's clothing blow into the lava river and ignite. Transfixed by the gruesome spectacle, Obi-Wan cannot tear his gaze away as his former pupil becomes engulfed in flames, his rasping screams tearing the air to bleeding shreds…_

Obi-Wan bows his head and shudders at the memory.

_In these wails of agony, Obi-Wan hears much more than terrible anguish. He hears Padmé's cries of despair as she sees her loving husband transformed into a loathed monster; the sorrowfully determined battle shouts of Jedi Knights and Masters defending innocent children against a Sithly harbinger of death; the screams of those children as they are felled by a lightsaber – the very weapon they had one day hoped to wield – like so many stalks of wheat by a wicked scythe; his own gasps of horror and denial as he must learn that this weapon of grisly death is his Padawan's sapphire blade…gripped in his Padawan's hand._

_The Master tries to bring his hands to his ears to shut out – mute – the onslaught – but finds he cannot raise his frozen arms… So he screws his eyes tight shut instead, striving desperately to keep Vader's shrieks of torment from clawing their way through his mind and tearing, shredding treasured memories of Anakin's laughter._

_His laughter…_

_And the laughter from a precious remembrance in the Jedi's head clashes, mingles and echoes with the horrible, continuing screams…_

_He cannot stay any longer; he will go mad - but his boots must be filled with lead, for all his strength cannot budge them an inch. Near distraction, he wonders just what exactly it is that keeps his numb feet cemented to the smoking ground, and understands it to be a sense of ghastly responsibility. For, after all, is not Anakin's Hell Obi-Wan's Purgatory? He, too, has played a part in this tragic travesty - and retribution is demanded__…_

_When he can bear no more, the vise suddenly releases its grip around his ankles and Obi-Wan turns on trembling legs and runs – fleeing like a coward – back to Padmé's ship. He picks up the frail, heavily-pregnant young woman with the tenderness of a father towards his daughter and carries her inside._

_She stirs as he lays her on the sleeping quarters' bunk. The first name on her lips: "Ani… Obi-Wan…where is Anakin? Is he alright?"_

_Obi-Wan's throat, squeezed painfully closed by excruciating guilt-fueled grief, is unable to formulate a reply. But it matters little – Padmé, even half-lucent, reads the answer in his haunted eyes._

_She sighs softly – an empty, hollow sound – and closes her eyes once more, her head falling, defeated, onto the bunk's pillow. As she drops once more into the blissful oblivion of unconsciousness, a single tear escapes to spill down her cheek._

_Obi-Wan wipes it away with the pad of one calloused thumb, smoothes her sweat-soaked hair back from her forehead – the last kindness left him to give her – and walks, stumbling and shuddering from emotional chill, to the cockpit, setting a course to rendezvous with Yoda…if the ancient and revered Jedi Master is still alive._

_Only the two droids operating the cruiser are privy to his bitter tears._


	5. Chapter 5

'Beware the Dark side, Jedi.' How well he knows the warning of the ancient maxim. But it is too late…for Anakin.

Reflexively Obi-Wan clutches his arms tight against his chest, pressing hard, fingernails digging into his skin – trying to bring the intense emotional pain he feels out into his physical reality where he can understand it, deal with it…heal it.

Love.

There is no other word for the tumultuous emotion roiling within him. For his last words to Anakin – "I loved you!" – were not quite true.

He loves Anakin still, despite everything the young man has done and continues to do (though he supposes he should not)…and he always will.

Love.

It is the love of a brother for a younger black-sheep brother…the love of a father for his wild and wayward son.

Love.

If what he is feeling now is love, Obi-Wan reckons that hate would have to hurt a lot less.

He (never imagined he could come to this) longs to cry – to unleash the tsunami of hurt and regret he holds within…

But he cannot. His tears are locked – trapped – in the frozen pool of ice that is his heart.

He never knew before that ice and cold could burn – but they do, as hot as the inferno of Mustafar's lava; in his heart and in his dry eyes that have no teardrops to moisten them…

His arms press even tighter against his body, fingernails digging deep enough to draw blood –

_Obi-Wan sits in the solitary silence of the cockpit (the droids having retired to the medbay to tend to the still-unconscious Padmé) and tunes the ship's holo-comm to Yoda's frequency._

_He has not felt this lost and alone since that long-ago day – his thirteenth birthday – when he was shipped off to the Agri-Corps as a Jedi cast-out, the chaff of the Order, an initiate with no Master to take him as a Padawan…left with no hope and no future…_

_When a reply is not immediately forthcoming, he switches to the frequencies of each and every Knight and Master he can remember, intermittently still trying to reach Yoda, hoping to pick up someone, anyone to banish this terrible gnawing loneliness –_

_Absolutely no one at all responds._

_And so Obi-Wan doggedly tries frequency after frequency, desperation all too quickly creeping into his frustration as he realizes what this must mean, until the ominous crackling of dead static feeding through the comm unit makes him fear that not even the Grand Master will return an answer._

_A thrill of unnatural terror seizes him at the thought, and quite suddenly he cannot take the monotonic sound of the static any longer and his hand comes smashing down on the comm's mute button._

_The desolate silence that instantly fills his ears is awesome and deafening. He is alone, he and the ship an insignificant speck of flesh and metal adrift on an infinite ink-black ocean. The vacuum of empty space yawns sickeningly before him, a vast gaping maw eagerly ready to devour him – and Obi-Wan knows what it is to look into the very heart of his own fear and despair._

_But then, about three hours after Padmé's space cruiser breaks free of the stifling stench of Mustafar's atmosphere, Yoda's little blue hologram comes sputtering and wavering bravely into focus, the gravelly croak of his voice piercing the random noise of occasional interference as fumbling fingers turn the sound back on – and Obi-Wan's relief is great enough to bring him close to tears._

_Obi-Wan has managed to make contact._


	6. Chapter 6

_For the first time in all his years as a Jedi, the ancient Grand Master looks as old as every day of his 9 centuries. Yoda's long ears droop pathetically with fatigue (although that is to be expected, after his confrontation with Darth Sideous)…and Obi-Wan sees new lines of sorrow etched in the already deeply-creased and wrinkled brow._

_He knows his own appearance must be no better – the black soot and sand of Mustafar, mixed liberally with his own sweat, stain his skin and his singed, torn and raggedy clothing. He can feel the furrows weariness and horror have carved into his face._

_So he finds it rather funny and must hastily squelch his sudden absurd desire to laugh when "Obi-wan, fare well, do you?" is Yoda's opener to the conversation._

_"__As well as can be expected. And you – how…are…you, Master?"_

_"__Concern yourself with me, do not. When nine hundred years old, you are, look this good you will not."_

_This small attempt at levity is met by soft chuckles from both Jedi._

Mirth… Such a foreign sensation now…when short days ago he and Anakin had shared laughter, trading blows and friendly banter in the Temple dojo…

_"__Come on, now, one more round… You can't be tired already! Or is my Master becoming feeble in his old age?"_

_"__Would that your blows stung as sharply as your barbs, my very young apprentice!"_

_Anakin's laughter rings out across the salle, answered by Obi-Wan's feral grin._

Obi-Wan clings to the brief memory of happier times as a drowning man clutches a floating life raft, pressing the palms of his hands against closed eyes to keep the images of Mustafar from intruding…

_The chuckles fading into silence, all traces of humor are erased from Yoda's face as he continues, "Tried to reach our fellow Jedi, you have?" _

_Obi-Wan swallows, hard. "Yes, I attempted to make contact. No one responded." A desperate, ridiculous hope rises in his breast and he blurts out, "Have you - ?"_

_That hope is soon quashed. Yoda's silence is answer enough – and the answer, though one Obi-Wan has been expecting, is terrible._

_The Grand Master nods his head once, sagely, and sighs. "Feared this, I did." His eyes, as they meet Obi-Wan's, are filled with infinite sadness._

_"__No more, the Jedi Order is."_

_Save for the two Jedi Masters, there have been no survivors of Order 66. What will come to be known as the Great Jedi Purge has been a resounding success for the Empire._

_They choose not to speak of their fallen Jedi comrades (brothers and sisters in the family of the Force), instead offering up a moment of mute remembrance, sending out a prayer that the Force may take its faithful children to its breast and grant them peace in their final eternal rest._

_Yet the Order is not quite dead…not yet._

_Despite the events which have left their harsh marks on them both – or conversely, perhaps, because of them – Yoda is the most welcome sight Obi-Wan's eyes have beheld in a long, long time, and the Jedi finds himself hungrily drinking in the sight of the little green Master, vaguely aware that Yoda is doing exactly the same thing._

_They do this, Obi-Wan realizes, to reassure themselves that they are not completely alone._

_'__I am not the last Jedi in the galaxy.'_

A tiny whimper that speaks of serious discomfort sounds from beneath the loam-brown over-robe, along with a prickle of an emotion closely approximating intense displeasure through the Force.

Startled back into basic awareness of his surroundings – how quickly he forgets his training! – his arms immediately relax their punishing hold. A surreptitious glance about reveals no prying eyes.

He can't be too careful – spies for the Empire lurk everywhere, combing the galaxy for Force-sensitive infants to corrupt and train as child soldiers of the Dark.

He opens his cloak ever so slightly, just enough to peer down to check on his twins.

The twins. Not really his – Padmé's. And…Anakin's.


End file.
